


parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme

by ghosthorse_tracks



Category: Stamboul Train - Graham Greene
Genre: Canon Lesbian Character, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, May-December Romance, Post-Canon, the melodrama kinda got out of control sorry guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthorse_tracks/pseuds/ghosthorse_tracks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I hope someone has actually read the book I've based this on. It's quite good if you're willing to give it a chance. Title from Scarborough Fair.</p>
    </blockquote>





	parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme

**Author's Note:**

> I hope someone has actually read the book I've based this on. It's quite good if you're willing to give it a chance. Title from Scarborough Fair.

Mabel Warren leaned against the hotel dresser, cluttered with bottles of scotch sucked dry hours ago. Gray morning light crept through a parting in the heavy curtains and illuminated the motionless figure buried beneath the covers on the bed across the room. Even beneath layers of sheets and blankets, Mabel could discern each of Coral's pleasant features: the long, smooth arms; the slender torso; the gentle curve of the legs. Heat rose in her face, and she let more of her weight rest on the dresser as she bent to pick up her glass of scotch. Coral really was lovely; it was a shame she was so feeble. 

She startled slightly in spite of herself when she saw Coral stir. “Where am I?” her voice came weakly from the bed. 

Mabel lit a cigarette, the little flame from the lighter momentarily casting a glow on her masculine face. By the time she looked at Coral, the flame had gone; only the tip of the cigarette glowed a soft red. “Vienna,” she barked. “We'll be leaving for home as soon as I wrap up this story.”

Coral sat straight up in bed. “Home?” She never had the prettiest face, Mabel thought idly, not that it mattered. She'd do anything to see those legs walking around in silk pajamas, striding across their bedroom to mix a pair of cocktails to drink in bed.

“You'd like to live with me, wouldn't you, Coral?” It was less a question than an assertion. Mabel took a drag on the cigarette as she approached the bed, wobbling on drunken legs. “I'm having the whole flat redone, just for you and me. After all, you wouldn't like to sleep on the same sheets Janet Pardoe slept on, now, would you?”

Coral drew back as much as she could, pressing herself backward into the overstuffed pillows, staying as far from Mabel Warren as she could. “I don't think I'd like to live with you at all.” She crossed her arms with the petulance of a child.

Mabel loomed above her like an eerie specter, and Coral could retreat no more. “Where else do you think you can go?” she taunted. 

Coral's breath caught in her throat – perhaps a stifled sob. “Well, I – there was someone I wanted to find. In Constantinople, where I was headed.” Her face glowed as brightly as Mabel's had before Coral had awoken.

Mabel took a long, slow drag and carelessly blew the smoke in Coral's face, clouding her unattractive features. “Don't think I don't know you're talking about that Jew. You'll have nothing to do with him any longer, I'll tell you that. And whether you care to believe it or not, he'll have nothing to do with you.” 

“Don't talk about Carl that way!” Coral blustered. Bitter tears welled in her eyes as her pitiful attempts at defiance crumbled, her shoulders slumping beneath the weight of Mabel's cruelty. “He's a human being, you know,” she murmured.

“Sure, he's a human being all right.” Mabel scoffed and turned on her heel. As she puffed again, the smoke from her cigarette left bluish curlicues in the light filtering in from the window. “Human beings are the most despicable creatures on Earth. Tell me, Coral – would a dolphin seduce another dolphin's mate out of spite? Would a clique of teenage rats ostracize another rat for being born in the wrong corner of the basement?” She lethargically crossed to the dresser, where she crushed her cigarette in a nearly filled ashtray, before approaching Coral again. “Come, now, do tell,” she prodded as she sank to her knees at Coral's bedside. “If you have anything more optimistic to say, I'd just about die to hear it.”

Coral lay speechless, biting her lip as if to hold back tears. Her lip quivered pathetically nonetheless. Her face was particularly homely when she cried, Mabel thought.

She rested her elbows on the edge of the bed and leaned in. “He was all too human,” she continued quietly, “just like the rest of us. He did what any man in his right mind would do, leaving you in Subotica the way he did and taking my Janet Pardoe with him. He was human enough to love you, to make you love him, to make love to you, and, in the end, to leave you. But who's with you now, dear? Who came to save you from yourself?” Her thin, unappealing lips twisted into a sickening smile as she leaned in yet further and dragged her chilly fingers across Coral's cheek.

“You're a monster.” All of the resentment that built up in Coral's heart during her silence culminated in those three words, words that deprived Mabel, the so-called woman who knelt before her in a mockery of a lover's caress, of her humanity. The one excuse that anyone could use in desperate times to explain desperate behavior – oh, she's only human – Mabel could not use. She was not a person but a predator, an animal undeserving of even the cheapest sort of love.

Yet Mabel could only laugh, exhaling an unsanitary mix of smoke and scotch onto Coral's embittered countenance. She should have started her phone calls ten minutes ago.

***

Once Mabel wrapped up the story – a great success in terms of magnificent tabloid sob-stories – she and Coral embarked on the long, awkward journey home. Purely out of convenience, they rode the Orient Express.

Seated in the same compartment, together but not intimate, they traveled in silence, thinking of other people as their eyes rested lazily on the scenery they'd passed once before, on a fateful journey that seemed ages ago. Passing the same dreary rocks and trees and sky again, they each silently and separately acknowledged that they weren't the same people they'd been before boarding the train the first time.

Coral, seated nearest the window, leaned head and shoulder against the glass pane and wistfully let her fingers slide down the window-pane as if stroking the gnarled trees silhouetted against the pale sky. It looked ready to snow. “Sometimes I wonder...” she whispered, her fingers still lingering on the glass.

Mabel watched the reflected image of Coral's face, translucent against the trees, and noticed a mature, knowing quality in her expressions she hadn't seen before. “What?” she said, more suddenly and loudly than she intended.

Coral turned to look at her quickly. “Oh, nothing. It was stupid.” Seeing the young woman recoil as though she'd been slapped, Mabel regretted saying anything at all. It was no wonder girls never went for her – she was too rough with them.

“No, really,” Mabel implored as she struggled to soften her naturally rough voice. Was it natural? Or had years of intrepid reporting and a lifetime of unrequited love roughened it the same way it roughened her manner? “I'd like to hear.”

Coral's face grew lost and forlorn, frantically searching in the dark for something that wasn't there. Her searching eyes groped like pale hands in the darkness. Suddenly the search ended; her eyes hardened and grew cold: she had found her answer. “You wouldn't care to hear, and I wouldn't care to tell you.” She turned her face back toward the window sharply, searching again, but for something different now. The dreary world outside the train was somehow easier to decode than the demented woman sitting beside her.

***

“Home sweet home,” Mabel muttered as she shoved the key in the lock and pushed open the door to her flat. She'd made sure to call Cousin Con while in Vienna to ensure that every trace of Janet Pardoe was removed from the place before she returned with Coral. Indeed, the flat's living room had already been done up in pink ring velvet, bright and saccharine as cotton candy. Mabel offered her large, rough hand to Coral. “Let me take your bag.” When Coral, looking petrified, did not hand the bag over, Mabel snatched it from her and stalked off toward her bedroom.

Even still standing just inside the doorway, Coral could hear Mabel shouting at her from the bedroom. “You oughtn't to make this so difficult. You'll be well-paid, you know.” A series of expletives followed the sound of a large object crashing to the floor. 

When Mabel returned empty-handed, Coral muttered, “I don't want your money. I want to go to Constantinople.” She scrunched her facial features unattractively as if fighting back tears.

Mabel grinned again – it was that same awful smile she always had on – and leered at Coral, her eyes following the lines of her body up and down. Now that they were no longer in public, she had nothing to fear; there was no reason not to enjoy her victory. “Now, now, I've told you about this already.” Her inflection conveyed a false consolation and a feeling of condescension. She placed her hands on Coral's shoulders and led her to the newly upholstered sofa, where they both sat down. “You want Constantinople because you want validation. It's not enough for someone to tell you that you're pretty; you want them to treat you like you're pretty. You want that man to make love to you again because it makes you feel like you're worth something.”

Coral's eyes shot daggers. “You don't know anything about Carl. He – he loves me, I just know it.” The daggers turned to bitter tears as she leaned into the sofa and let the smooth, clean fabric stroke her face. She didn't regret letting the tears soak into the new fabric; she regretted nothing. “The way he made love to me... it meant something.” The more she spoke, the more her sobs muddled the boundaries between her words. Mabel soon found it difficult to understand her.

“I think you need to go to bed, darling,” Mabel crooned as she draped her arms about Coral's trembling shoulders. She felt Coral's entire body begin to tremble as she pulled her in closer, breathing in the fresh, untainted scent of her skin. “I'll leave you alone if that's what you want.” Of course, the promise was empty, but if it comforted Coral, perhaps it would help somehow.

Coral responded only with a whimper, and Mabel rose to scoop her up in her arms. They hadn't yet made it to the bedroom before her weak arms began to shake beneath the weight of Coral's limp body. For the millionth time, Mabel resented being born a woman. A woman could not save another woman, could not be a knight in shining armor, had no right to even attempt to win a woman's heart. The world was stacked against her, a world of men who possessed the physical strength she could never hope to have. She asked too much; an abomination like her had no right to desire a rainforest of exotic birds when she ought to delight in capturing a sparrow. The weakness of her arms forced her to drop Coral quite abruptly onto the freshly made bed, canopied with the same delicate cotton candy ring velvet.

Mabel tried to set her straight on the bed and eventually gave up and knelt at her bedside. “I don't want you to think about that man anymore. He's out of your life now, just as Janet is out of my life.” Her tone was soft, vulnerable, unsure. “We'll make it through if we don't think about people who have betrayed us. Let's try to be kind to each other, all right? All right?” She frowned upon realizing that Coral was fast asleep and likely had been since Mabel carried her to bed.

***

Mabel sat on the newly upholstered sofa, which had already begun to reek of cigarettes and scotch, and propped up her feet on the coffee table. Cousin Con sat on the chair opposite her as Mabel gazed disapprovingly up at the drapery. “You paid far too much for this ring velvet. Didn't I tell you not to spend more than eight-and-eleven a yard?” 

Cousin Con was a woman much like Mabel: unappealing, masculine, and inexplicably aging. “I thought I got it for a very fair price,” she mumbled, striking a match to light her cigarette.

“There's nothing that can be done about it now.” Mabel paused to fetch her own pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket. “Say, where's Elsie? Didn't you bring her along?”

“I gave her the day off. It was her mother's funeral or something tragic like that.” Cousin Con struck another match to light Mabel's cigarette; it was not anything romantic like one sees in the movies.

Mabel sighed and took a drag. “Well, that's a damn shame. I would have liked her to meet Coral – she's a prize, isn't she? Coral! Coral, come out here and meet Connie!”

Coral emerged from the bedroom where she spent most of her time, sitting and reading the bland books Mabel kept on her shelf. She spent so much time in the room that Mabel had abandoned it and had begun sleeping on the sofa. Coral lingered in the doorway to the sitting room rather than entering fully, and she waved halfheartedly at her employer's guest. 

“She's awfully pale – and thin, too,” Cousin Con whispered to Mabel, leaning in conspiratorially as if that would keep Coral from hearing. “Aren't you feeding the poor thing?”

Mabel's lips tightened, and she disregarded Connie's concerns. As she turned to Coral, her manner regained its usual false sweetness. “Coral, this is Cousin Con, a great friend of mine from the past. Connie, this is Coral, my new companion. I'm sure we'll be great friends in time.” Even her usual confidence, so masculine in its nature, was beginning to diminish. She wondered if she and Coral would ever become close the way she'd hoped. 

Coral reiterated her halfhearted wave and tried just as halfheartedly to seem interested in the occasion. “It's great to meet you. Mabel, you never told me you had a cousin.”

Mabel and Cousin Con shared a glance and chuckled. “We're not really cousins at all,” Cousin Con said.

“I guess you could say we were lovers once,” Mabel said, “back when we were two foolish people.” The two women laughed as if it were funny that they were lovers once, as if young love were worthier of laughter than anything. Yet they both kept young companions, wanting to preserve that bit of youth they once had with each other, before they grew old and cynical and realized that no one young and beautiful would ever love them – except maybe for their money.

“You're as foolish as ever.” Coral turned on her heel and walked out, presumably returning to the safety of the bedroom.

Again, Cousin Con used an indiscreet loud whisper, not even waiting until Coral was completely out of sight to speak. “The pretty ones are always bitchy, aren't they?”

She'd done her best to remain calm thus far, but now Mabel was furious. She jumped up from the couch and pointed forcefully at the door. “Get out. I don't want to hear another word against Coral.”

“What's the problem? You in love with her or something?” Cousin Con was bright enough to run off before Mabel could get close enough to sock her in the nose.

Just about anything could anger Mabel in the right context, but nothing irritated her more than being told a truth she could not bear to accept. No truth is harder to accept than the truth that one is in love with someone who will never love back. 

***

Mabel didn't invite anyone else over for a long while. She spent most of her time at work, writing the latest sensationalized tales laden with smirking equivocations, before coming home and drinking and brooding alone. Her hatred for the overpriced pink ring velvet grew. It reminded her too much of a child's nursery.

She sank deeply into a worn leather armchair that didn't go with the décor at all and drank her scotch, knowing all along that Coral was in the other room, brooding over the Jew whose name Mabel had already banished from her mind. Coral was an awful companion, she thought, a bitter, ungrateful little thing. She wasn't half as compliant as Janet; she refused to mix cocktails and strut around in silk pajamas for Mabel's amusement. Janet had always gone along with it when Mabel kissed her, yet Coral would hardly let Mabel within two yards of her. In spite of all her waywardness, something compelled Mabel to continue to pay her a fine salary.

“Coral!” she yelled drunkenly, slamming down her empty glass on an end table. “Goddammit Coral, get me some more scotch, I'm out.”

“I'm not your maid.”

“Then what the hell do I pay you for? Your companionship?”

Coral sauntered out of the bedroom and into the living room, and Mabel wondered if she purposely made her hips swing as she walked, or if it was merely the product of one leg being shorter than the other. “I never asked for your money. I've told you time and again what I want, and I don't think I could possibly make it any clearer.”

“Just get me my damn drink, then I'll listen to you.” Mabel loosened her tie; it was beginning to choke her.

“I think you've had enough to drink for one evening.” 

She turned to return to the bedroom, but Mabel interrupted her, slamming her glass down and yelling, “Don't you tell me when I've had enough to drink! I've had enough when I say I've had enough!” Her words slurred increasingly in a combination of drunkenness and rage.

“Mabel, I'm not going to play your games,” Coral said softly. She turned toward Mabel again. Her blonde hair framed her sweet, once-forgettable face that had grown distinctive with experience. “I know your tricks. I know you. I'm not the same girl you met on the train that day.”

Mabel reluctantly rose to fetch a drink from the cabinet herself, toting her glass along with her to the kitchen. “You don't know a damn thing about me,” she muttered.

“I know more than you'd think. You're an empty shell, and you fill your emptiness with drink and paid companions.” As Mabel reentered the room, Coral approached her, looking fierce and afraid all at once. She had a funny sort of smile on her face. “You're empty because you have no capacity for love, yet your hunger for love consumes you. Maybe once you were someone worth loving, a long time ago...”

Mabel chose not to process what Coral had just said and instead sank into her chair once more. “Have a drink,” she muttered, gesturing toward the newly upholstered chair on the other side of the end table. “It'll do you some good.”

Coral walked out to the kitchen to fetch herself a glass to match Mabel's. “Maybe I will,” she said. She sat tall in her chair, lettting Mabel pour her a drink. Her dress reached down to her ankles and obscured the voluptuous curve of her legs. 

Mabel watched Coral sip her drink with caution and femininity, noticing how she didn't flinch as the strong liquid made its way down her throat. The longer she watched, the more indulgent she felt. It had been a long time since she'd last been able to watch Coral in her natural state: sleeping in a Vienna hotel room, gazing out a window on the Orient Express. It didn't matter that folds of fabric covered Coral's legs; to Mabel, they were still in full view. “How's the scotch? I buy only the best.”

Somehow, she'd managed to coax a smile out of Coral, whose eyes looked to Mabel. “It's the only scotch I've ever had, so I suppose I can't complain.” She wanted to reach across the end table and reach beneath Coral's skirt, letting her hand follow the curve of her leg upward and upward. Instead, she took another long drink, finishing her glass once more. It was an empty glass now, empty the way she was an empty shell, devoid of love.

Coral smiled. “You're a coward.”

“I've had enough of your insults. If you're just going to be an ungrateful fool, well, you can go back to the bedroom.”

“If you had any bravery in you, you'd kiss me.”

Mabel stood and turned away from Coral, clutching her empty glass tightly. “I suppose you're right. The trouble is I've no bravery in my heart, none at all.”

“And no love?”

“No, none of that either.” Mabel clenched her fist around the glass as if trying to shatter it. Her attempts were in vain; her physical weakness only worsened with time. Time drew out the worst in Mabel, making her uglier, weaker, more hateful.

Coral rose as well, delicately setting her half-drained glass on the end table, and walked around Mabel so that they faced each other, finally at eye level, on equal footing. “I've been thinking a lot lately – ever since the train, really - about love and what makes it. I loved Carl because he was kind to me and noticed me, and no one had ever noticed me before. I don't know why you loved Janet. Maybe you didn't.” She clasped her hands behind Mabel's neck, drawing her closer. It was the most Mabel had ever heard her speak. “You love me because you're lonely and there's no one else around. That's it, isn't it?” Coral's eyes welled with tears, and her clammy hands trembled against Mabel's neck. “There's no better reason to love someone like me.”

Mabel dropped the glass. It fell to the hardwood floor and shattered. “I'll get it,” she muttered as she wriggled out of Coral's arms and shuffled away to the kitchen for the broom and dustpan. She felt ashamed that she couldn't come up with a better response.

***

Mabel came home from work one day doubled over in pain, stumbling inside the flat as if intoxicated and immediately collapsing on the sofa. Even as she tried to lie down, she let out a string of profanities that would make a sailor blush.

Coral entered the room on silent, graceful feet. Perhaps it was the way she walked that never allowed Mabel to forget that Coral had been a dancer not so long ago. “Rough day at work?” she ventured.

“My back hurts like hell. Get me some ice – and some liquor, while you're at it.”

She glided out to the kitchen without complaint. Ever since their last major conversation, she had been remarkably obedient and quiet. When Coral returned with a glass of scotch and a bag of ice wrapped in a towel, Mabel eagerly put both to use within moments. “Honey, you're a godsend,” she said as she shoved the bag of ice between her back and the couch cushions. 

Once Mabel had taken a sip of the scotch, Coral set the glass on a nearby end table and sat down in a chair on the other side of it. “Maybe you ought to – ” she started before a sour expression overtook her countenance.

“Oughta what?” Mabel attempted to lift herself up slightly to get a better look at Coral. It hurt too much, and again she exploded with unprintables.

Coral smiled to herself, glancing up at the ceiling, then down at her feet. “I was just saying maybe you ought to start sleeping in your own bed again, if the sofa hurts your back so much.”

Mabel paused before responding, wondering if her ears deceived her. She couldn't imagine that Coral was considering giving up the bed to Mabel, even though it had been Mabel's to begin with. To her, Coral was more of a guest than an employee; therefore, if she wanted to sleep in the bed, she deserved to. “It doesn't hurt my back. I must have pulled something at work, something like that.” She laughed abruptly. “After all, I am getting to be an old woman.”

Coral laughed heartily and sat so that Mabel could see her face clearly. “I think you're missing the point. You see, I'm proposing that we share the bed.” Her smile, self-conscious just moments ago, now displayed a mischievous quality.

Once Mabel realized the implications of the proposal, she felt heat rising in her face. She reached for her drink in an attempt to counter it, but it only worsened as she fumbled for the glass, which seemed so far away when she was in such pain. “Goddammit.”

Coral handed Mabel the glass. “Wasn't that your plan from the start? To sleep in the same bed?” Mabel sullenly sipped and refused to answer. “You don't have a guest room or anything. Once I found that out, I knew your intentions.”

Again, Mabel attempted to shift her body slightly, but the maneuver resulted in excruciating pain. “Turn the lights out; they're hurting my eyes.”

“All right.” Coral rose from her chair and flipped the light switch to its off position. As she walked back into the hallway leading to the bedroom, she turned back to face Mabel for a moment. Her eyes glinted in the low light. “If you'd like to come in, you're welcome to as soon as you're able.” With that, she disappeared, like the hasty snuffing-out of a candle. Mabel hardly had time to feel puzzled before another wave of pain overtook her.

***

Springtime lifted the dreary clouds from the skies of Cologne, prompting Coral and Mabel to spend much of their time sitting on the balcony overlooking the city. They sat in elegant deck chairs, which Mabel bragged that Cousin Con had found her for cheap, and sipped lemonade on good days and scotch on bad days. The sun warmed their winter-accustomed faces as they lounged in the comfortable silence that formed between two people who understood each other.

Mabel pointed to a luxury car on the street below. “I oughta have one of those. Wouldn't we be a sight to see, driving around in that? I could easily afford it, you know.”

“I bet you could.” Coral smiled, sipping her lemonade – it was a good day. “Has your back been all right?”

“It's been better since spring started.”

Coral reached out to stroke Mabel's face. “Your skin has cleared up since the winter.”

“I've been drinking less.”

“Mabel – Mabel, I – ” Coral stammered after a pause. “I was never gifted with words.”

“I was too gifted with words. So much that I can fool people with them.”

The two women leaned toward each other so quickly that it was impossible to tell who had instigated the act. When their lips met in a kiss, for a moment they were not the aging woman and the naïve girl, but simply two people deeply in love, never mind their unlikely circumstances. The meeting of two miserable people resulted in a brief, transient happiness that disappeared as soon as they parted and looked at each other's faces. Each saw a different woman than she thought she'd known; somehow the other woman's face, once so familiar, morphed into an unrecognizable distortion. 

They returned to their seats in silence, the same uncomfortable silence that had blanketed them on the Orient Express trip home, and sipped their lemonade, wishing it were scotch. Neither woman considered for a moment speaking to or looking at the other.

***

Mabel had started sleeping in her own bed again, this time with Coral by her side. In her long weeks of sleeping alone on the sofa, she had nearly forgotten the happiness that comes with the feeling of another person sleeping beside her, feeling the other woman's warm, slow breath as she descended into sleep. Coral did not toss and turn; she slept soundly and in stillness.

The first night, Mabel awoke bewildered and drenched in a cold sweat, her body all tangled in the blankets. Her restless tossing and turning roused Coral, who switched on the bedside lamp. “Did you have a nightmare? Are you all right?” Coral murmured, stroking Mabel's face tenderly.

Just as Mabel's weak eyes began to register the soft, warm glow of the lamp and the gentle touch of Coral's fingers on her skin, the nightmare began to come back to her. They had both been there, herself and Coral – and Myatt too. They had been sailing on a magnificent ship in the middle of the ocean, and when they sat on the deck, she could feel the chilly air on her face, refreshing and pleasant. Yet when she looked to her side to speak with Coral, she found Myatt sitting there as well, a smug smile on his face. Before she could protest his presence, he tossed her overboard, sending her tumbling onto an iceberg that was rapidly drifting away from the ship. She reached and reached toward Coral, yet in all her desperation, she couldn't move an inch. There she lay, paralyzed and weak, sprawled out on the ice and drifting into isolation. 

Mabel shook her head weakly. “Don't worry about me. I'm going to get a glass of wine and come back to bed. Then I'll be all right.”

“Don't go.” Coral smiled and took Mabel's hands in hers. “You don't need to drink. I'm here for you.”

“I can get you a glass too, if you want one,” Mabel muttered, but the suggestion was lost when they closed the small distance between them for a slow kiss with eyes and mouths closed. It was Coral who prodded Mabel to open her mouth and deepen the kiss. Coral slowly lowered Mabel onto the bed, never breaking the kiss. The wine was forgotten.

***


End file.
